Got Millions?  New magazines are betting on you…

by Alissa Pak, member of THP's "lux" team

The next time one of the recent Mega Millions winners happens to breeze past a newsstand, they certainly won’t have a shortage of reading materials to flip through. Though some may call the current economic outlook uncertain, for four magazine publications it’s anything but as they launch their new titles. Not exactly aimed at the populist sect, these magazines won’t be everyday reading material unless you count yourself among the 1 percent of society.

Are you a subscriber to the Bloomberg Terminal at an annual fee of $20,000? If yes, then be sure to check your mailbox for the next issue of Bloomberg Pursuits. Introduced earlier this year, Pursuits is distributed twice a year to an audience with an average annual household income of more than $450,000. The premiere issue profiled a solar eclipse-viewing Bloomberg subscriber traveling via icebreaker. Now how do you book that trip? Bloomberg isn’t the only one jumping on the luxury magazine bandwagon. Niche Media which already publishes regional luxury titles such as Hamptons, Ocean Drive and more will unveil Du Jour this upcoming September. Their typical reader will have a net worth of more than $5 million and average home value of $1.5 million.

Time Style & Design sound familiar? It should. After a three-year absence, parent company Time Magazine thought it the perfect climate for its comeback for the twice published luxury title. A commonly spotted phrase in the issues return is “price upon request”. ForbesLife, a spinoff made available only to Forbes subscribers is hitting the stands, literally. For the first time, the latest issue of the luxury lifestyle title can be picked up by anyone wanting to read about your average billionaire’s Manhattan’s Upper East Side pad. So what gives?

With slumping newsstand sales and disappearing advertising pages, it’s pretty common knowledge that the mass-market magazine industry has seen better days. But its luxury counterparts the likes of Departures and Financial Times’ monthly luxury magazine How to Spend It have all grown, both in revenue and subscribers. A recent article on this very topic by industry trade publication, Women’s Wear Daily, happened to put it best. “As middle-income consumers get pushed to the bottom of the hourglass, the brands succeeding are those that target low-end and high-end consumers.”

So next time you pass a newsstand, flip through these newbies and pick up a lottery ticket while you’re at it.

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